


One Day, This Day

by claireweasley (dul_cin_ea)



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Crack, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Implied Relationships, Other, RPF, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22965379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dul_cin_ea/pseuds/claireweasley
Summary: Whatever it is, they were a family and they would take care of it together, Gerard decides. Thirteen and a half episodes of Full House hadn’t been wasted on him.
Relationships: Ray Toro & Gerard Way
Kudos: 6





	One Day, This Day

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on livejournal on 22 June 2007, and has been exported from there, so apologies for the (undoubtedly numerous) extremely old errors.
> 
> No disrespect intended to the real people I borrowed for this. I’m almost entirely sure it didn’t happen.

The morning starts oﬀ pretty regularly. And okay, it’s a cliché to start that way, but it is, at least, it’s a regular enough morning to make a note of. Gerard had survived far too many irregular mornings before now waking up in fuck knows where, with fuck knows who, sometimes with clothes. Sometimes in the outdoors. It was real disconcerting when there were bugs, or hooves involved.

But this morning is regular and lazy; starts with a slow shuﬄe from the hotel and a brief trip to Starbucks. Everyone’s in a good mood because they got a night oﬀ the bus, and no one is rushing them because it’s only a few hours to the next stop. They are on the road by half past ten and Gerard is already falling asleep in a seat shirt rucked up slightly at the back, when someone’s cell goes oﬀ.

‘Fuck,’ Frank says, a little too loudly for their quiet, regular morning. ‘We forgot Ray again, didn’t we?’ 

Bob sits up then, swearing a bit; grappling for his phone which is playing a tinny jingle that, Gerard kind of thinks, sounds alarmingly like an ABBA song he knows.

And now that he is mostly awake, and kind of thinking about it, Gerard can’t remember having seen Ray at all this morning. Last night in his hotel room he’d had got kind of stuck in this weird vortex; watching repeats of Full House on cable until his eyes had dried up and he’d had to close them. So when it’d been time to get up again he’d been so busy trying to get his legs to move he hadn’t really thought to check whether everyone was present and accounted for.

Gerard feels a twinge of something in his stomach that could’ve been guilt, or could’ve been that latte frappuccino repeating on him.

‘Where is he?’

‘Back at the hotel,’ Bob replies in a sort of hushed way, clicking the phone shut. ‘He says something bad has happened.’

Even Mikey looks up then.

-

All four of them tumble out of the bus before it can even come to a complete stop, one after the other; falling out like skittles. Gerard moves the quickest, feeling real nervous as he runs up the foyer, all these fucking ideas of what might have happened to Ray crowding his head, and every idea stupider than the next. Not that stupid was really against the odds in Ray’s case; sticking candy up his nose was one in a long line of many confusing things he’d done that might have been interesting if it was some sort of metaphor, but mostly it was just Ray being strange.

Whatever it is, they were a family and they would take care of it together, Gerard decides. Thirteen and a half episodes of Full House hadn’t been wasted on him.

But when he reaches the suite, Ray isn’t there at all. Gerard circles the room twice, just to be completely sure; he even checks the walk in wardrobe, and (rather unnecessarily) under the bed. All Ray’s things are still there, unpacked; a shirt thrown on the ﬂoor, his cell on the dresser.

But no Ray.

‘Where the hell is he?’ Gerard asks as the rest of the guys catch up, piling into the room behind him. ‘Where’d he go?’

‘Do you think he’s been kidnapped?’ Mikey asks.

‘Who would kidnap Ray?’

Bob sounds like he’s genuinely interested, but Mikey just shrugs.

‘Ninjas?’

Frank starts to laugh at that, and Gerard slaps a hand over his mouth; something suddenly having caught his attention.

‘Do you hear that?’ Gerard asks, and all of them get real quiet. Sure enough, he hears it again. A squeaky noise– a _totally familiar_ squeaky noise, now that he’s listening. Gerard focuses all his attention on the sound, and follows it until his gaze catches the movement on the bedspread.

And then Bob stills beside him, which makes Gerard think that he’s seen it too, which would make him not completely crazy, which is good (for him at least).

Standing on the bed next to the dresser is Ray. And regularly there would be nothing else to add to that sort of observation, except that right now Ray looks to be about six inches tall – roughly the same size as a snickers bar.

It’s a very tiny Ray. And tiny Ray looks kind of pissed oﬀ. 

An eerie, perplexed silence falls over the room.

‘Okay, which one of you fuckers slipped me the acid.’

Gerard doesn’t even attempt to answer Frank, because his mouth is just hanging open uselessly, and he’s pretty sure it’s rhetorical anyway. He doesn’t feel stoned and even if they all were all on drugs it couldn’t seriously make every one of them hallucinate that Ray got small at the same time. Gerard remembers brieﬂy that at chaos Bert used to have times when he thought he was Danny Devito, but that, he concludes, almost right away, is probably not the same thing.

Tiny Ray squeaks at him again, so Gerard slowly gets down on his hands and knees and crawls over to the bedside so he can hear him. When he’s close enough Gerard leans right in and asks Ray if he’s okay.

‘Do I look okay to you?’ Ray huﬀs, and Gerard has to admit that it wasn’t the best thing he could have asked right now, but he panicked.

‘How’d it happen?’ Gerard asks, inspecting Tiny Ray curiously. He’s really fascinating because he’s exactly the same, even his clothes are the same, they’re just real, real little.

Ray shrugs helplessly.

‘I don’t know, I just woke up like this. For a while I thought I was still dreaming.’ 

Gerard nods, thinking things through carefully.

‘Do you have wings?’

Ray stares at Gerard for a few moments, confused, and then shakes his head ﬁrmly.

‘No.’

‘Can I check?’

‘Gerard, I’m not a fairy!’

Ray throws his hands up in the air dramatically, and ﬂops, face ﬁrst, into the white pillow. He looks a little bit like a cartoon, but Gerard doesn’t laugh because Ray is probably in a real sensitive state right now.

‘Don’t worry,’ Gerard says, as conﬁdently as he can manage. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

Ray turns his head and looks at him in a way that makes Gerard think Ray doesn’t quite believe him, (and let‘s face it, who would at this point? Gerard’s not a wizard; he has absolutely no experience at this.)

Gerard’s thinking about how to reassure Ray, when Mikey abruptly leans in over his shoulder.

‘How’s he going to play guitar?’

-

Gerard calls a band meeting right there, and after a hushed, carefully-worded discussion they decide that for now it’s best they let as few people know about Tiny Ray as possible. Ray Toro, they will say, is sick (but not real sick), and contagious (but not like, plaguey or anything) and has to rest in his bunk for the day. Tonight’s show will have to be cancelled, of course, they’ll drive straight on to the next one and see what happens. It could be that this problem might have even reversed itself by the time they get there.

‘What if it hasn’t?’ Bob asks quietly.

Gerard doesn’t answer him, because he’s got no answer for that one. He just presses his lips together meaningfully and picks up Ray as gently as he can manage. Ray grips his ﬁngers real tightly the whole way to the bus, like a baby animal holding onto its Mom.

And it gives Gerard an idea.

-

‘I’m not going in there.’ Ray says, his tiny little arms crossed across his tiny little chest. 

‘It’s for your own good’

‘I’m not a hamster!’

‘It’s for your own good,’ Gerard says again, ﬁrmer this time. ‘Ray, come on, you could get hurt. Frank might sit on you and crush you. Any of us could, you know. You could fall and hurt yourself–’

‘It’s a motherfucking hamster cage!’

‘Yeah, but it’s pretty badass. Look, it has a wheel.’

Gerard reaches into the plastic cage and ﬂicks the pink contraption for emphasis. Ray just glares at him, his tiny face red with annoyance.

‘I’ll be here too, you know,’ Gerard continues. ‘It’s not like you‘ll be all alone or anything.’

Ray is still glaring, but he walks across the bunk, crawls through the little plastic hatch and inside the hamster cage. Ray gives his surroundings a quick once over and then turns around and ﬂips him oﬀ. Gerard doesn’t retaliate because he knows Ray’s frustrations must be very strong right now.

‘You’ll thank me when you’re big again. I‘m trying to save your life here.’ 

‘Your cage smells like ass,’ Ray replies.

The other guys take their free day as a good opportunity to take oﬀ and see their loved ones, and enjoy the outdoors. Gerard stays with Ray, because he promised and all that. They chat a bit, about new songs mostly, and video games. It’s all pretty regular, the only really tense moment comes when Gerard rips up some sheets of newspaper to put in the corner of the hamster cage. Ray works himself into a bit of a state again, and tries to bite him.

-

On the second day Ray is still tiny, and quite a bit more angry, so Gerard puts his Wolverine ﬁgurine in the cage with him for company. He thinks it’s kind of a nice idea, but Ray calls him a cocksucker, and later in the evening Gerard ﬁnds one of Wolverine’s mutilated legs on his pillow.

(That’s about when Gerard decides against oﬀering Ray the Outdoors Barbie clothes he’d picked up especially. The fucker can stink.)

-

On the third day Gerard wakes early to the sound of giggling and opens one eye to see Ray running like a fucking maniac on the wheel and laughing himself into some sort of ﬁt. Gerard knows this could be because Ray has ﬁnally snapped, but it’s sort of nice to see him smiling, so he just pretends he’s still asleep and lies there listening to the high-pitched giggling until Ray tires himself out.

-

On the fourth day and still no change, Gerard gives up.

‘I can’t, I can’t ﬁx it!' Gerard admits, feeling real terrible, hot prickles of frustration at the back of his eyes. ‘I tried. I’m sorry, I really tried. I even rented out–.’ 

Gerard wipes his nose sloppily on the back of his sleeve. ‘Stuart’s a mouse, Ray! A mouse that can talk. He hasn’t even been shrunk. I don’t know what I was thinking with that.’

Ray peers at him over the marshmallow he is eating, but doesn’t say anything.

-

On the ﬁfth day Gerard wakes again real early, but not because Ray is giggling. There is a sort of weight on his head, and it he automatically starts to pull against it before he realises it’s Ray there. Ray (the dumbass) has, at some time during the night, gone and crawled out of the hamster cage, up onto Gerard’s pillow, and fallen asleep in his hair.

Gerard frowns; he wants to wake Ray up; shake him out of his hair and tell him how he’s a stupid fuck who could have very well been crushed underneath his skull, and how he has to take better care of himself if he’s going to be a tiny person because he can’t live in a hamster cage forever, and Gerard can’t look out for him forever.

But Gerard doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t wake Ray because he’s obviously comfortable (snoring right into Gerard’s ear) and hey, the press of warmth against his skull is kind of comfortable on his end too, so fuck it.

He can stay.

-

When Gerard wakes again later that morning, it's with a slight jolt. There is a soft, huﬀy sort of snuﬄe from behind him and Gerard becomes slowly aware of the fact that Ray is still in his hair, only something has changed, something–

‘Holy shit Ray, you’re huge.’ Gerard says, alarmed; sitting up so fast he bumps his head on the side of the bunk and makes himself a little dizzy.

Ray squints at him through that mess of ridiculous hair, and then rolls onto his back and holds a hand up in front of his face.

‘I think I’m back to normal,’ Ray corrects, and he breaks into a wide grin. Gerard smiles right back at him because he’s right, he’s Ray again. Normal sized, regular Ray. In his bunk.

Honestly, it’s kind of cramped in here now.

Ray’s smile fades slightly, and for a second Gerard thinks it’s about the newspaper or Wolverine, and he’s all ready to defend himself and–

‘You’re bleeding.’

Gerard blinks, and his hand ﬂies up to his forehead. Sure enough there’s a small, oozing wound there. He must have bumped it harder than he thought or something.

Ray reaches across the hamster cage for the box of tissues and hands it to him.

‘I think I need a coﬀee,’ Gerard grunts, applying one of the tissues to his forehead.

‘Stay here, I‘ll take care of it,’ Ray says, patting Gerard brieﬂy on the shoulder, and disentangling himself from the bed sheets. ‘I wouldn’t want you to fall and hurt yourself.’

There is a tiny, pointed silence as Ray grins and disappears around the curtain. 

‘I should have let Frank sit on you!’ Gerard shouts after him.


End file.
